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Reams of paper have been wasted on this trial. This and Raffaele Sollecito’s books are the only ones you “need” to read. The rest are just full of idle speculation and rumor. At the same time this book should never have been written. Ms. Knox should have been off doing whatever it was she wanted to do after her year of Study Abroad in Italy. Still we all know what happened.

For those of you that are still “on the fence” about Amanda’s culpability, well you must still believe the earth is only 6,000 years old and that the jury is still out on Galileo. There was never ever a shred of evidence that Knox or Sollecito committed any crime whatsoever and an overeager media, public, police, and a prosecutor literally bent on a 17th century witch trial ended up taking one tragedy and trying to make it into three, the lone perpetrator safely ensconced behind bars for most of the time this mess went on. The fact that Knox and Sollecito were both attractive and Knox American, strangely, or maybe not so, worked against them.

The writing isn’t great, but how can it be and stick to the facts? There is enough mystery and suspense and truly bizarre hijinks without any authorial tricks. It reads more like testimony than biography and doesn’t always convey what a fiction writer could have added to make the narrative a little more exciting at times. Still, this wasn’t the writer’s goal and at times the necessity to reveal in detail certain personal details that should quite rightly have remained private can still make the (sane) reader squirm.

There are the usual superfluous photographs that we’ve all seen a million times, but at least Knox could pick out the pose this time.

I hope she and Raffaele make scads of filthy lucre off the affair, enough to never worry about money to at least make up for some of the misery and the loss of some of the best years of their lives.

I also hope somebody also remembers Meredith Kercher and her sad and terrifying violation and murder at the hands of some Ivory Coast drifter. That’s what we should have been talking about the whole time.

I’ve been reading a bit of history (get over it, I’m smarter than you are.) recently and I began to wonder why the US has considered the United Kingdom to be their closest ally seemingly forever. After all we (the US, I mean) fought two wars against Britain (and kicked their ass both times even though Britain was supposedly unbeatable at the time). Britain is also the only country that ever attacked the continental US (we beat their ass that time as well). At the same time the French were allies against Britain even sending their army and navy over to help us beat the British asses, and probably saved us in the Revolutionary War (that’s the Colonial War in North America for the limeys here). France is a republic, and has been for a long time now, while the UK is still a detestable hereditary monarchy. Other than a mostly common language, why is Britain considered our big buddy?

General Lafayette

I really think France should be celebrated as the United States’ closest and best ever ally, not the UK. I’m liking that. France gave us the Statue of Liberty too. What did Britain ever give us except onerous taxes, no representation, killing a bunch of us, and burning down the White House too. Well, there is Dr. Who. So I still say screw the UK and Vive la France!

As a side note, I live near a place where the Battle of Great Cane Brake was in 1775. There were no British soldiers just loyalists-Tories and Americans (he, he). It wasn’t a big battle but it is in most books. The Americans were sick of having all their crops and livestock impressed for the British. They ambushed the loyalists and ran ’em off. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say. They celebrate it every year with a re-enactment. I like seeing all the loyalists laying on the ground at the end. Oh, and I don’t live too far from Kings Mountain and Cowpens and we roughed up the cowardly Bloody Tarleton and his loyalist rabble there too. So when somebody says that the British are our best ally, I think: when did some French guy ever try to kill an American on American soil? The French and Indian wars don’t count because they were fighting the wretched British back then. We colonists weren’t smart enough then to know which side our bread would soon be buttered on. We still thought that loopy King liked us “subjects.”

Digression #2. My heritage is Scottish/Irish and a bit of Dane mixed in. I have to think some wise-ass limey hereditary Dook or Lord was responsible for making my ancestors’ lives so unbearable that they felt they had to make a treacherous journey to some far flung wilderness in the New World just to survive. This thought kind of bums me out as well. I’ll get my bit of petty revenge though when the Scots vote to bail out of the whole wretched mess of hereditary monarchy soon. I’m sure the rest of the Irish and the Welsh won’t be too far behind. Then the British Isles will make the Balkans look like a collection of big countries.